


Love Under Will

by SapphoIsBurning



Category: NXT
Genre: Ceremonial magick, Lust Sublimated Into Violence, M/M, Spooky bullshit - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-14 22:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13017663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphoIsBurning/pseuds/SapphoIsBurning
Summary: A growing obsession with Aleister Black leads Velveteen Dream into a world of light, shadow, and pure will.





	Love Under Will

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chasesstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasesstarlight/gifts).



> You said, "Scare me." So I scared Velveteen in your place. Happy Yuletide.

There was something about Aleister Black. Something that made Velveteen taste copper in his mouth when they passed in the hallways of the Performance Center, something that made the hair on his arms stand on end when their eyes accidentally met from across the gym.

It had been a long time since Velveteen had felt that thrum, not since he left home. He thought of the root worker who lived in the apartment down the hall, the man with long dreads that he wasn’t supposed to talk to. Of course he talked to him. He gave him a High John the Conqueror root in a red flannel bag to keep in his locker, to bring him luck in matches.

High John didn’t have anything to do with this.

Aleister walked like he was already king, stately and severe. He wasn’t cold, but how rare was his smile? Velveteen heard him laugh, he swore, but never turned in time to see anything but a cocked eyebrow.

The symbols tattooed on his skin. The six-pointed star on his trunks. The hand of glory. Wrestlers are a superstitious carnival of souls, but this wasn’t just a matter of blowing kisses up to the sky. Aleister lived in a larger world.

Who wouldn’t want to know more? Who wouldn’t peer around corners and get caught staring? The demon tattooed on Aleister’s back returned the favor.

“Church is at ten,” Ember said, racking some weights with a loud clunk and knocking Velveteen out of a daydream.

“Did I say you could talk to me?” he snapped.

Ember just smiled and didn’t blink her red eyes once. “If you don’t know whether you want to pin someone or fuck them, you’ll never do either.”

“I can’t imagine how you know what that’s like,” Velveteen shot back with ice, but he felt cold too.

“Can’t you?” She asked. She sucked her teeth. “He did say you were young…” She shrugged.

“What does that mean?” Velveteen asked. “Who said?” But she walked away.

***

Before a takeover was a delicate time, everyone with their hackles raised and nowhere for that energy to go until the match. And that did nothing for the rookies backstage supposed to be learning something, standing around in suits yet to be tailored, all hoping to be noticed only for the right reasons.

Brooklyn was sweltering. And Velveteen felt that tang in the air, like clammy metal, and it was getting stronger and stronger.

He wandered. There were a lot of hallways under the Barclay’s Center and he felt pulled left and right until he found a door ajar and a familiar voice coming out of it.

No one was around.

He pressed an eye to the crack in the door. It was an open, cement floored area, and someone was there.

“Ateh,” Aleister said, touching his forehead. He touched his chest. “Malkuth.”

Velveteen curled his toes in his boots and bit his lip, stilling his breathing.

“Vegeburah, vegedurah,” Aleister went on, touching his shoulders in in turn, “As within, so without, as above, so below.” He picked up a shining dagger sitting on top of an overturned wooden crate in front of him.

Velveteen could see some lines drawn on the floor with chalk, and arrows, and he wanted to see it all but could only hold still and watch Aleister turn to the east.

“Yehovah!” Aleister said, and it was as if he spoke a word made of fire, the sound echoing loudly even in the hallway where Velveteen stood. He traced a shape in the air with the knife and turned clockwise. “Adonai!”

He was turning to face the door, and Velveteen backed up one step, then two, then ran, the fear of being seen overtaking the pull of those words. As he tried to make his escape he heard more. “Ehieh. Agla. Raphael, thou art before me, and behind me...”

***

“You look like you walked off the set of the Craft, what is his deal?” Velveteen asked Ruby, sitting down at her table in the Performance Center cafeteria and interrupting something she was saying to Ember. He tilted his head in the direction of Aleister Black, sitting alone at a table going over a few pages of notes from the trainers.

“I told you he had it bad,” Ember said.

“I'm not sure I can help you there,” Ruby frowned. “I don’t fuck with ceremonial magicians.”

“What?”

“You could just ask him,” Ember said.

“He said a bunch of words in a ritual. I recognized Jehovah, and Raphael.”

“Probably the good old LBRP,” Ruby sighed. “Look. I’m an Indiana Wiccan, my answers aren’t any better than google. Also, don't spy on people.”

“Talk to him,” Ember said.

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Fucking. Fighting. Wizard shit,” Ruby said. “That’s enough.”

Velveteen scowled and left in a huff.

***

Velveteen curled up with his phone, sitting on a stack of mats in the back corner of a training room, furiously googling anything he could. Ceremonial magic leads to magick leads to chaos magic leads to sigils. He read through a sparse black and white webpage about some kind of banishing ritual of the pentagram and while in print it plausibly looked like what he saw Aleister doing, it was so dry and cold. The words Aleister spoke had fire. He was reciting the names of God and calling on angels, and Velveteen wanted someone to call out to him that way. To speak his name with fire.

He knew what he had to do.

***

“You have no idea what you are doing,” Ember said to him as he came backstage. Her arms were folded and she leaned against a concrete pillar.

“I do not have time for you to speak to me this way,” Velveteen said, striding purposefully toward the locker room. His first confrontation with Aleister had left him itchy and out of sorts, like he had walked into a bubble of static. But he had done it.

“You could just call him,” Ember said.

“That’s not what I want!” He turned around to snap at her, but she wasn’t there. When he turned back around, Aleister was in front of him.

“Do you covet what I have?” Aleister said with a maddeningly calm expression.

“No,” Velveteen said truthfully.

“Do you want to be what I am?” He cocked his hips, leaning forward slightly.

“No,” Velveteen spat. “I want you to say my name, I told you that and I will keep telling you. Is something wrong with your hearing?”

“Love is the law,” Aleister said, a smile tickling his eyes but not making it to his mouth. “Love under will.”

A lightbulb flickered and buzzed above them, and then went out in a shower of sparks. Aleister disappeared into the darkness.

***

Velveteen had a dream about flying. He was soaring through the air and he could see the apartment building where he grew up, the Potomac rivers, and the Washington Monument, a long spire sticking up out of the greenery. But then he began to fall.

Then he was holding a knife. Somehow he knew that if he cut in the right place he could make wings out of the sky, but birds appeared above and below him.

“You need a stronger will than that if you want to fly, Patrick,” a shining black bird said in Aleister’s voice.

He woke up with the taste of copper in his mouth.

***

Patrick was in the middle of a set of reps when that familiar voice.

“Will is a funny thing,” Aleister said. “Your head won’t will into being what your shadow doesn’t want.”

“My will is just fine, thank you,” Velveteen grunted, squatting a bar heavy with weights.

Kassius Ohno, who was spotting him, sighed.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to say my name,” Velveteen said.

“Velveteen,” Kassius said. “Come on.”

“What do you really want?” Aleister said, his voice shifting to the left.

“Fight me and find out,” Velveteen said.

“What are you talking about?” Kassius said.

“Aleister,” Velveteen said.

“Oh,” Kassius frowned. “I thought you were talking to me.

Velveteen put the weight down and grabbed a towel. “Why won’t you--”

Turning around, there was no one there.

“You need to talk to Mr. Regal,” Kassius said.

Velveteen blinked and shook his head. “In my own time,” he said.

***

The next morning, he talked to Mr. Regal.

“He's in my head,” Velveteen said, wringing his hands.

“Well who put him there, then?” Regal asked.

Velveteen didn't answer, just looked away.

"You'll get your match, lad," Regal said. "But what would your mother say. You need prayer or a beating. Maybe he'll do both."

"What was that?" Velveteen said, rising out of his chair.

"You're out of control," Regal said. "You've got to get your heart under your head, or you won't be long for this business."

Love under will, Velveteen thought to himself.

"Yes, sir," he said, driving his nails into his palm.

***

The night before War Games he had another dream. He was in the Performance Center, and he was naked. It was empty and he wandered through endless rooms full of equipment and empty rings and chairs up on top of tables and echoing silence. He came to a room that had just one ring in it, and Aleister was there.

“What do you really want?” Aleister called.

“I want to be a god,” Velveteen said.

“What if you already are?” Aleister said. Velveteen came closer and saw that he too was naked.

“I want you to worship me,” Velveteen said. He climbed into the ring.

Aleister handed him a snake. Velveteen cradled it against his body.

“As within, so without.” Aleister smiled. Velveteen felt everything in his body sizzle, and the snake twisted in his hands.

The snake bit him, and he woke up tangled in the sheets, achingly hard. It was four AM, but sleep wasn’t a place he was ready to go back to. He took himself in hand, cursing Aleister's name out loud and praying for it to stop, or finish, or be like this forever.

***

From the ring, it felt like the whole world was in San Antonio screaming his name, every living being but one.

Velveteen was sure his will was plenty strong and that he had done everything right. Slept with his root bag under his pillow. Taken every opportunity to draw the man out. Protected his third eye, which was Ruby's idea, somehow. Painted the man's face on his body.

And here they were.

The copper taste was so strong that he grimaced, wanting to spit out from his mouth. And there was Aleister, his tattoos looking like they were about to blink.

The lock-up burned his skin but he held on, smiling as he thought of a story he remembered about a man wrestling an angel. You had to hang on.

As he sat cross legged in a taunt, Aleister mirrored him, and then slid onto his belly, face stonily seductive, and Velveteen’s heart quickened.

There was always a point in a match for Velveteen where the energy shifted and he could feel the other man's body as keenly as his own, like they were a being with eight limbs and infinite grace. He felt it then, the system of arms and legs, the ring the earth and the arena the sky, the water of sweat and the fire of the bell. They were one.

The spinning strikes and kicks, the closeness of the grapple, the referee, every fan in the crowd, the locker room, the earth heaved a breath together. Aleister whispered in his ear, strained: “You feel it too.” Not a question.

It was dizzying to climb to the top turnbuckle in such a state, but Velveteen was going to get what he wanted. A flash of being covered by Aleister came into his mind, the ecstasy of the pin, and he tried to cast it away as he dove, elbow out. Everything was too bright and hurt too much, and then it wasn't so much that Aleister spun and kicked but that he stayed still and the world spun around him.

Love under will. Well, Velveteen was under something, as the referee counted one, two, three, and everything was coming apart, or contracting into a black dot, Aleister's sweat cooling on Velveteen’s skin.

Velveteen lay on the mat, gasping for air.

Aleister took the microphone. He turned to Velveteen.

“Enjoy infamy, Velveteen Dream.”

The words vibrated like brass, like a holy chime, like a stolen glimpse of a ritual. They were an incantation. They were a summoning.

***

Velveteen sat in the locker room with his head in his hands. His face was wet and his breath was heaving, racked with silent sobs. He was alone. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioner and the industrial lighting.

There were footsteps behind him.

Velveteen held his tongue. He steadied himself and felt his skin prickle. He waited.

The footsteps continued. Aleister walked around the side of the bench into Velveteen’s vision and sat down next to him.

Velveteen looked at him, and then looked back down at his hands. They sat in silence together.

A fluorescent light buzzed and flickered.

Velveteen was sore from the beating he took, but his chest felt lighter. The copper taste subsided, like a weather front had finally passed.

“Is it over?” Velveteen asked, his voice echoing louder than he meant.

“It's just begun,” Aleister said.

The flickering light went out.

He took Velveteen's hand. “Come.” They rose, and they stepped into the darkness together.

 

 


End file.
